The growing importance of global capability centres (GCCs) in India has opened up a strong market opportunity for Indian startups, said Sankara Srinivasan, Co-founder of Koot, a Bengaluru-based startup which helps young SaaS and AI startups unlock their enterprise sales.
Delivering a masterclass on the topic ‘India: The new epicentre of enterprise tech buying’ at TechSparks 2025, YourStory’s flagship event, Srinivasan said GCCs in India are commanding global leadership roles and driving new initiatives.
According to him, GCCs in the country are no longer back offices or support centres and have evolved into front-facing centres driving innovation. Alongside this evolution, there is also a growing presence of global leadership roles based out of India. He also said many GCCs based in India are delivering cutting-edge solutions and products that find applications in global markets.
There are over 1,700 GCCs in India employing around 1.9 million professionals. These centres have evolved into innovation engines driving the new product agenda for their parent companies; a lot of decisions are also taken at the India level.
All these developments have created new market opportunities for Indian tech startups, said Srinivasan. He highlighted that GCCs are keen to have partnerships with tech startups through three channels: direct investment, accelerator programmes, and joint development of solutions.
He said several GCCs have teams that identify the pain points of customers and how they can go about solving them. It is here that startups can play a key role by coming out with innovative solutions with cutting-edge technology, he added.
However, Srinivasan cautioned that the path towards selling products or solutions to enterprises is not an easy one as there are several parameters to be met. Firstly, the products from startups should be of enterprise-grade level, which can solve problems at the scale in which enterprises operate. Secondly, the products have to be highly customisable. Lastly, startups should bear in mind that the sales cycles are long.
